2 New Poems

Start Together

Four late trains, four missing
minutes more of pacing unused
dockyard, four times unspent
together in heated, deathly starlight:
bit bent, bit wavy, streaky road tar
paint; I collapse.

But you hold up: water bottles,

backroom bedding, why didn’t
have to, why do?

Nearest thought: it’s a bit charming,
to have a drapery, a kind word,
a chuckle,

or, could be, we started something.

Plastic on Plastic

It’s a whistle of timber, falling
wounded steel,

those first churning treads,
then glowed maple-trace petrol,

peace-making Medicine Wheel,
formulation of Garden River signage,

vague reminders from federal
buildings that it’s still living,

here, the land with creeping totems
of checkerboard morality,

chess jump movements through
map line.